


second chances, they don't ever matter; people never change

by honeysparks



Category: Moana (2016)
Genre: Angst, Animal Transformation, Arguing, Canon Compliant, Coda, Ficlet, Gen, Graphic Description, Hawk Maui, Heavy Angst, Internal Conflict, Internal Monologue, Internalized Anger, Self-Hatred, Shapeshifting, i dont think its that graphic but just to be safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-07 20:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10368531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeysparks/pseuds/honeysparks
Summary: Set at about 1 hour 15 minutes into the movie, after their botched attempt to defeat Te Kā, this piece emphasises on Maui, when it takes him two tries to become a hawk because his fishhook was cracked.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i used some official lines from a transcript of the movie so all credit for that goes to disney !!
> 
> title from 'misery business' by paramore

 

She had been so utterly, humanly  _stupid_. He'd told her to turn back, he fucking had, but she'd gone ahead and steered them forward anyway. 

The moment he'd seen the gap between the rocks, he'd felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. Moana was brilliant, that much was obvious from how quickly she'd mastered the difficult skill that was Wayfinding, but she was also still a child, and therefore cursed with one of man's greatest errors: immaturity. Maui had thought that he'd have been able to at least take control of their pathetic little boat and steer them away, given that the winds were favouring their sail and their escape from Te Kā would've been smooth and painless, but he was wrong. Moana was utterly headstrong and stubborn, and fighting a volcanic demon with a thousand years' worth of brooding and probable plans for vengeance took more energy than they'd both expected. Then, before he knew it, things were escalating at lightning speed, and Moana was a fucking idiot, and now his fishhook was cracked. 

Fucking hell, his fishhook was cracked. 

Being a generally benevolent people-pleaser, Maui didn't think he'd ever felt such anger so strongly- yet there it was, coursing through his veins. He wasn't even entirely sure what he was angry at, but it felt like a sturdy concoction of self-hatred and outward frustration at the circumstances and at Moana was brewing in the pit of his chest. As he turned his damaged hook over in his hands, forcing himself to breathe in and out, a small, shaky voice spoke up from behind him. 

"Are you okay?" 

Maui wanted to laugh. First, Moana had rescued him from his isolation, then she'd psyched him up and primed him to think that he really was capable of restoring what he'd screwed up so many centuries ago... And now? Now she'd wrecked their one chance, casually destroyed the only thing that gave his life any meaning or worth whatsoever, and was asking if he was okay. Had it all been some cold, manipulative plan to teach him a lesson for stealing Te Fiti's heart in the first place? He grit his teeth, subconsciously tightening his hands into fists. They only curled around his hook, painfully bringing him back to the reality of the situation. 

"Maui?" Moana called again, and he turned around. Not because he wanted to talk to her, or even  _look_ at her, but because Maui had a distinct feeling that if he didn't reply, her next step would be to come closer and place a hand on his shoulder in a so-called comforting gesture. And Maui didn't trust himself not to throw a punch or a particularly hard hit if that happened, even if she was a girl. 

He brought his hook up, showing it to Moana with a sneer. "I told you to turn back," he said, malice clear in his voice. 

To her credit, Moana actually looked upset. "I thought we could make it," she said, looking down. Her casual use of the word 'we' drew Maui's attention back from his hook to her words. 

"We?" He repeated, raising an eyebrow. If she dared to do anything other than correct herself, he didn't know what he'd do. 

"I thought... I could make it," Moana finally admitted. "We can fix it," she blurted right after, plummeting back down right after she'd just about redeemed herself. 

Maui snarled, eyes narrowed and shoulders tense in rage, "It was made by the Gods. You can't 'fix' it!" He barked, shaking his head at Moana. 

She looked sorry for about another moment. "Next time, we'll be more careful," she said, and that was all that Maui heard, because right after that she launched right into a spiel about how they were going to get past the rocks the next time they approached Te Kā. As if they hadn't already been put in their place and shown that they were clearly out of their league with the lava demon.

As if they hadn't nearly been killed by her carelessness. As if everything Maui was made of, everything that defined him, hadn't cracked. 

Seething, he waited until she was done. "I'm not going back," he stated plainly, refusing to be shaken. 

"What?" For the first time since before pride and sheer stubbornness had taken over, Moana's voice trembled with uncertainty. "You still have to restore the heart." 

Running his fingers along the smooth edge of his hook, Maui looked down at the shattered part and briefly touched the sharp splinters along its sides. "My hook is cracked," he said, voice breaking in defeat, "One more hit and it's  _over_." What he didn't say was how he felt that, should the life of his hook end, so would his own. What he didn't say was how deeply the cracking of his hook resonated inside him, how insidiously it had twisted him. 

Perhaps Moana could sense the finality in his voice, because the next thing Maui knew, he had a panicking, desperately shrill voice demanding that he restore the heart. "You have to do it!" 

"Without my hook, I am nothing." 

The words felt heavy as they rolled off his tongue. In truth, they'd existed in Maui's head and chest and on the tip of his tongue ages before he'd even thought of stealing Te Fiti's magical heart for the humans. He'd always known that he wasn't worth much, especially so because his own mortal mother hadn't wanted him; surely the Gods had only given him the hook to make sure somebody pulled up islands from the depths of the ocean and lassoed the sun and harnessed the breeze. He wasn't anything special or particularly amazing, but his fishhook was. His fishhook was the most precious thing in his life- hell, his fishhook  _was_ his life. With it, he had admirers, supporters, and people who loved him and thought of him as a hero. Without it, he was nobody. Without it, he was nothing.

Still, it was one thing to think something and another to actually say it aloud, and before that day, Maui had never actually vocalised these internalised self-deprecating thoughts. 

"That's not true." Moana's voice was small but firm.

She looked at Maui with an expression too close to pity for comfort. Wrong move. All it did was push his buttons further, because the one thing that Maui did not need was a filthy fucking mortal feeling sorry for him, a demigod of the very wind and sky themselves. Practically shuddering with rage, he didn't even wait for her to stop speaking before yelling, his voice echoing around them into the empty night air that surrounded their stupid little boat. " _Without my hook, I am nothing_!" In his sudden rage, he dropped the so-called Heart of Te Fiti onto the rattan deck of the boat, barely managing to hold himself back from spitting on the cursed thing. 

Moana was visibly shaken by Maui's sudden explosion, but he didn't care. In fact, he was almost glad about it because perhaps it would convince her to stop trying to suck up to him in order to get him to join her suicide mission. But then, in a very _Moana-like_ gesture, she was enraged and shoving the little green stone in front of his face. "We're only here because you stole the Heart in the first place!" Moana screamed in accusation.

Maui was unfazed. An attempted guilt-trip wasn't going to work on him. Not when it was about the one thing he'd beaten himself up for centuries- literally. He knew that it was all his fault, and he knew that things would've been different and the darkness wouldn't have been released had he not stolen Te Fiti's heart. For a long time, he'd tried to justify his actions by telling himself that he'd done it all for the humans; the greedy, ravenous, self-indulgent, _insatiable_ appetite of the humans. But after what was probably the seven hundredth and fifty-second orbit around the sun since his banishment, he'd come to the realisation that while the humans were the ones grabbing at whatever they could get their mortal hands on, he had been the one to blame for taking what should never have been touched.  

All the same, Maui didn't exactly appreciate a child reminding him of the fact.

"No, we're here because the ocean thought you were special and you believed it," he spat back, enunciating his words slowly and deliberately so she heard every syllable crystal clear.

Barely flinching but with tears pooling in her eyes, Moana tensed and stood straighter. "I am Moana of Motunui," she said, her voice quivering, "You will board my boat..."

He wasn't having any of it. "Goodbye, Moana." If the curtness of his words weren't enough of an implication of just how utterly finished he was, the stiff, almost bored tone of his voice showed it perfectly. 

"Sail across the sea..." 

"I'm not killing myself, so you can prove something that you're not!" The sharp outburst that broke forth was unexpected even by Maui himself, but it was something that he felt needed desperately to be said. 

"And restore the heart of Te Fiti! The ocean chose _me!"_ To her credit, she finished the speech.

But Maui was done. "It chose wrong."

And then he was turning his fishhook over in his hands, bracing himself for the pain that would no doubt rack through his body as he used its power to shape-shift. When he'd first transformed after getting the hook back from Lalotai, it hadn't been painful, just extremely uncomfortable. But now that it was cracked,  _broken_ , there would be a price to pay. Maui closed his eyes momentarily, feeling the surge of electricity shudder through him as he pictured his hawk form. 

Normally, when he transformed into the forms of other creatures, he would picture them and remember the way his limbs felt when they were theirs. He'd think of the spines on his back as he crawled quickly as an iguana, or the antennae on the front of his head twitching as he ran along the cracks in the ground as a beetle. And when he turned himself into a hawk, his personal favourite of all, he imagined his wingtips brushing against the clouds as he soared high above the islands he'd long since pulled from the watery depths of the sea. He felt his beak, solid and firm, parting as a shriek erupted from his throat, piercing the sky and making his prey cower in fear and respect. He felt the large span of his wings reach and stretch to their magnificent extent, and he felt the power surge through his fucking veins.

But then, as the volts jolted through him, Maui knew something was wrong. His bones, which normally would've transfigured seamlessly into the thin, flexible wing bones of a raptor, felt as if they were changing too slow in some areas and too fast in others. Painful sensations twinged through his back and shoulders, and his body felt as if it was being shoved between two large stones that crushed him and scraped at his sides, tearing the flesh from bone and putting parts of him together that didn't match. His legs felt like they were going to give way, but luckily it all stopped as quickly as it began before he could have fallen forward into the water that lapped lazily at the sides of the boat. Still, he couldn't help but let out a small cry of agony. 

Gritting his teeth, he told himself to toughen up. And then he tried it again, but harder this time, as if he was thinking his thoughts in all capitals or in huge bolded letters. The telltale jolt of his hook spread through his body, slightly faster this time, and to his relief, he felt the normal sensations of his body transforming into that of a hawk. When it was done, he couldn't help but take a second to make sure he had all his talons and feathers. Though he was missing a few on the end of his tail, his wings were fully feathered and all-too ready to take flight and leave this latest catastrophe behind. 

As soon as he was sure he would be able to handle flight, he spread his wings and took off, flying with his back to the moon and to the lonely boat. 

"Maui!" Moana called, nothing but raw desperation and helplessness in her scream. 

But he couldn't hear it. He was too high up; too far gone. 


End file.
